Amy Goodman: It was 40 years ago that the “secret” U.S. bombing that devastated Laos came to an end, March 29, 1973. By that point, the U.S. had dropped at least two million tons of bombs on Laos. That’s the equivalent of one planeload every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years—more than was dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II. The deadly legacy of the Vietnam War lives on today in the form of unexploded cluster bombs, which had about a 30 percent failure rate when they were dropped from American planes over large swaths of Laos. Experts estimate that Laos is littered with as many as 80 million “bombies,” or bomblets—baseball-sized bombs found inside cluster bombs. Since the bombing stopped four decades ago, as many as 20,000 people have been injured or killed as a result. This is the focus of our guests, who have come from Laos to raise awareness about this ongoing problem. More here.